VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, [9], 10 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 19:29:37 04/26/08 Sat
Author: SS
Subject: Re: ****************ARIVERLOST1STREPORT************
In reply to: SS 's message, "Re: ****************ARIVERLOST1STREPORT************" on 18:35:02 04/26/08 Sat

Noah Eaton
April 23, 2008
Science 354U

A River Lost: First Report


Introduction

1) Who are the stakeholders in irrigation country in Eastern Washington and in the cities and suburbs of Western Washington?
- Stakeholders in Eastern Washington and the suburbs of Western Washington include farmers (who Harden illustrates the adversities his father Arno endured as a wheat, corn and barley farmer and livestock herder), companies and agencies that manage hydroelectric facilities along the Columbia River Basin, dam owners and operators, towns among the region whose local economies are pivotally dependent on the river’s resources, environmentalists (who Harden explains have primarily worked to save the spotted owl and caribou, among other species), Native American tribal communities, fishers, aluminum companies, barging firms and various other utility operators.

2) How do their interests compare?
- Harden mentions that every half hour, the Columbia “expends as much energy as was released by the explosion of the Hiroshima bomb” (17) and “possesses a third of America’s hydroelectric potential.” (17). Since the Grand Coulee and several other major dams were first installed in the mid-thirties, and turned the Pacific Northwest “from a boondock into a high-tech, high-wage region whose gross national product ranked tenth in the world.” (18), where many who benefited economically from it at the time have since taken pride in the culture and was depicted as a “soothing version of Garrison Keillor’s white-bread America.” (12) in Harden’s mind at one point, polarities have increasingly widened between natives who regularly rely on the Columbia River economically that defend “a subsidized status quo that they believed to be their birthright.” (16) and West Side residents who are less personally attached and dependent on the river intimately who, as Harden argues, behave “like dilettantes, motivated by a passing desire for a pristine playground or by abstract notions of saving endangered species.” (16)
Also noteworthy are the divides between those who rely on the river in Western Washington to those who rely on it in Eastern Washington. While “the integrity of the Columbia River and the survival of its salmon” (16) are hallmark concerns on the West side of the mountains, while on the Eastern side, where inhabitants once possessed much more political muscle but has since shifted to the major cities on the Western side, feel “betrayed by schemes to save salmon, schemes that would retool the river, speed up its current, and ground the barges.” (15) and where minimal to no attachment to salmon is tangibly felt in comparison (he notes that the issue of salmon mortality due to electricity demand there never came up in a combined sixteen years of education) and still like to cling to a more pastoral lifestyle, regardless of the many political contradictions that pepper the region in his view.

Chapters 1 & 2
3) What interests clash regarding spilling large quantities of water over the lower Snake Dams in the summer, I.e, who are the stakeholders and what are their objectives?
- In favor of what has been popularly termed the “drawdown” are environmentalists (most notably American Rivers and the Sierra Club), aiming to reverse the decline in migrating juvenile and adult salmon populations through these series of dams by proposing that, for a few months every year, water ought to spill over the dams rather than through hydroelectric turbines so to help young salmon eschew the turbines and warmer waters. In alliance with them are most fish biologists, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (who ironically in the 1960s decided to poison the sockeye habitat in their central Idaho spawning grounds) and many (but not all) Native American tribal communities, who have relied on salmon for their cultural heritage.
In opposition to this proposal are barge pilots and the Idaho port authorities, who insist that the lower water levels in result of a “drawdown” would halt all barge traffic on the river during each peak shipping season, irrigation system managers, grain buyers (the Pacific Northwest Grain and Feed Association has claimed that the scientific evidence behind it is inconclusive on if it will even help fish) and large populations of farmers who depend on them (as noted heavily in post-New Deal Moses Lake, with an abundance of Chinese pheasant and sugar-beet production that has since disintegrated), Northwestern utilities who would lose tens of millions of dollars to purchase electricity under such a scenario, aluminum lobbyists, the Army Corps of Engineers who insist it would be a heavy burden on U.S taxpayers to modify these dams, and various regional town and small city communities along the river, most notably Lewiston, Idaho, who resent elite outsider interests in trying “to take the pioneer spirit away from Idaho.” (47) and argue that overemphasis on saving one fish will wipe out other native fishes.
4) What scientific information would you want if you were the decision maker?
- In considering the statistic mentioned on page 25 of the text that one-quarter of America’s feed grain and 35 percent of our country’s wheat move down this river system, I would already be inclined to see that grain growers and barge pilots have necessary access to the river during peak season, but would also consider the experimentation for one month the spilling of water over two of the four dams, examine how that was or was not effective toward reducing salmon mortality rates, and would also give a second look into the much-mocked Kevlar fish tube proposal as noted on page 45, have a trial testing of it along one fraction of the river system, and examine survival rates through that single increment. I would also order an examination into how much water would be required for this endeavor and whether it would effect local water supplies and irrigation systems.

Chapter 3
5) How does the “machine river” challenge salmon?
- The “river machine” terminology is a recent one coined by utility executives, sprouting from the agro-industrial sprawl in the 1999’s across southeastern Washington in the Tri-Cities region which, as documented on page 66, includes a Chevron tank farm adjacent to the Columbia River in this region, a series of grain elevators constructed by the Cargill grain company, “sanitary lagoons”, commercial shopping strips, dams, racing boat marinas, hydroplane races, local utilities and electrical resistors like the Toaster. Under the “river machine” mechanism, a bulk of the Columbia’s annual flow is held back until the winter so that electricity needed to heat homes during the cooler months wouldn’t be wasted in solely May, June and July, as noted on Page 71 of the text.
Consequentially, sporting races such as the Columbia Cup, turbines in the dams and the violent pressure changes they generate in the waters, and sluggish reservoirs, among other factors, have affected the traditionally natural flow of salmon routes, where many salmon that are not killed are nonetheless adversely disoriented by the dam turbines, which results in considerable amounts of delayed mortalities and greater susceptibility to predators, as well as psychologically affect young juvenile salmon and their instincts on how fast it will take them to get to sea, cope with warmer water temperatures and progress at slower speed rates downriver that affect their “migratory drive” (72) In addition, efforts to divert them through stainless-steel pipes and flumes around McNary Pond have been found in a 1992 Army Corps of Engineers report to cause stress to the fish that “makes them more susceptible to disease and predators.” (74) and also “may interfere with the imprinting process that allows migrant salmon to remember how to get back to the streams of their birth.” (74)

6) What actions have been taken to address the challenges?
As mentioned in the aforementioned paragraph, dam operators have worked to implement nylon-mesh screens in their facilities to keep the fish from the turbine entrances, and divert them into “juvenile collection, holding, and transportation facilities” (72) where many of the smolts are injected with passive integrated responder, or PIT, tags, which helps identify “the fish’s species, weight, length when tagged, stream or hatchery of origin, and how long it has been trying to get to the sea.” (72) where some are counted, sorted and sampled for disease and, based on the findings, are either placed in the river beneath the dam, stored in tanks or placed into a barge or truck and are transported below Bonneville Dam (these actions have been met with immense criticism by environmentalists, as illustrated partially with the detailed 1994 fish-screening system malfunction that resulted in the deaths of thirty-thousand fish at McNary Dam.)

Chapter 4
7) Who were the promoters of building Grand Coulee Dam and what were their objectives?
- President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the most high-profiled promoter of the project, who promised it would provide cheap electricity for working-class Americans who felt the pinch during the Great Depression, showcasing it as part of his New Deal initiatives that would foment job creation and deficit-relief, who was met at the time with harsh criticism from members of Congress (particularly those residing in the Eastern half of the nation), private power lobbyists and engineering firms, arguing that it was serving a ridiculously low percentage of the American population (3 percent) and was a torrential waste of money trying to irrigate “a region of dead land, bitter with alkali.” (81)
Allied with Roosevelt was the Bureau of Reclamation, who provided the primary public-relations muscle to the project, and songwriter Woody Guthrie, who toured the Columbia Basin for a month and wrote an anthem (“Roll On Columbia, Roll On”) that placed a humanist, “proletarian glory” image to the proposal.

8) How well were those objectives met?
- Criticism went mute almost immediately by the time World War II began, where the overwhelming demand for electricity dominated the public psyche, thus opinion had shifted from “a magnificent day dream…into one of the best investments Uncle Sam has ever made.” (82) by one previous prominent critic, as electricity from the Columbia River helped produce one-third of the nation’s aluminum and half the power for the nation’s war planes during the war.

9) Who decided to build the dam?
- The idea was originally conceived “in a small-town lawyer’s office in the Columbia Basin desert in the late spring of 1917.“ (97) where five businessmen from Ephrata, Washington convened to discuss possible solutions to providing sustainable agriculture in a region stricken by drought, where one brought up the Grand Coulee based on an experience he had, visiting the site with a University of Washington geologist, which led to them asking themselves: “If nature could do it with ice, why couldn’t men do it with concrete?“ (97)
After nearly two decades of local public-relations campaigning for the project, the proposal eventually reached the ears of many members of Congress and, with the blessing of Franklin D. Roosevelt following his successful presidential bid, the United States Bureau of Reclamation enlisted engineers and private contractors to construct the dam, including L. Vaughn Downs, who became an assistant engineer in quality control for the project. Though the specific contractors are not documented in the text, additional research outside the text indicates that Consolidated Builders Incorporated constructed the dam.

10) What role did the science of geology play in the dam?
- As documented on page 94 of the text, the coulee “was cut about twelve thousand years ago after a massive sheet of ice, moving southeast out of what is now British Columbia, choked off the flow of the Columbia.” (94) which backed it up, formed a lake that eventually torrentially flowed out of the river canyon and leaving behind a trench that is what the Grand Coulee is today where, with warmer weather since then, has become a dry monument five hundred feet above the river.
Thus, the Bureau had to again make the ditch flow with water to make the project successful, which they accomplishing by diverting water through twelve pumps out of the Columbia and into the coulee. It is also explained by former Bureau Engineer L. Vaughn Downs on page 95 of the text that “the basalt rock, out of which the Grand Coulee was cut by the long-ago flood, is virtually watertight.” (95) and adds that the site had an abundance of aggregate that he claims is ideal for making concrete, which proved decisive in the dam’s successful, timely construction.

11) With the coming of World War II who became the stakeholders?
- As hinted on in Answer #8, the proponents’ arguments for the dam shifted from irrigation to demand for electricity and aluminum production. Thus, utility executives, airplane manufacturers, aluminum company lobbyists, reactor operators at the Hanford Site who were instrumental in providing back-up power supplies during the war and federal officials (most notably President Roosevelt) became the primary stakeholders.


Chapter 5
12) What stakeholder group and its objectives were not considered in the Grand Coulee decision? What do you think their objectives would have been?
- As is foreshadowed in Chapter 4 when Harden continuously asks: “What did the Bureau do to Columbia River Indians?”, Native American communities, including the Colville community, were left out of the landmark decision-making processes (the Bureau’s 1937 annual report on the dam’s progress, as cited on page 106 of the text, suggests that Indians only got a single instance of mentioning in the report, in the same paragraph discussing “rules governing ownership of dogs.“ (106) ), where some of the most sacred ceremonies of their religious lifestyles centered around the harvest of salmon in the summer months at Kettle Falls, which the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam resulted in the disappearance of Kettle Falls, and resulted in an alarming rise of unemployment, suicides, drug addictions and accidents in the community in subsequent years.
Anthropologists were also shunned out of the decision-making process, who at the time were “examining Indian artifacts above Grand Coulee.” (102)

13) If the group had been included, what scientific information have been relevant?
- Considering that Native Americans were, in fact, under the original 1920 Federal Power Act supposed to be paid by the state of Washington “annual fees based on the amount of electricity produced on reservation land.” (114) prior to the federal government taking over control of the dam in 1933, I feel that they were blatantly ostracized from the decision-making process altogether.
Had the Federal Power Act remained intact in federal policy, however, I’m certain that some Colville tribal elders would have demanded a study into how the construction of the dam would affect Kettle Falls and the summer migratory Chinook populations, and report an equivalent to the “Confidence Interval” today from the findings, as well as research how the project would affect the over 21,000 acres of prime bottom land that they had inhabited for many years, and determine an annual fee based on the overall percentage of water that covers the number of acres evidently inhabited by the tribal community, in relation to the overall number of acres that the dam proposed to regionally provide for.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-8
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.